Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet (1935)

Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, also known as The Mon­tagues and Capulets, comes from his bal­let, Romeo and Juli­et. It’s an emo­tion­al­ly charged piece of music, with strong horns and wood­winds lay­er­ing over a pow­er­ful melod­ic line played by the strings. Prokofiev’s dark and brood­ing pas­sages send chills up the spine and cre­ate a won­der­ful­ly dark atmos­phere, pre­sum­ably to express the ten­sion between the rival fam­i­lies of the Mon­tagues and Capulets. No won­der it’s used in film and tele­vi­sion so often; not least, of course, in the BBC’s The Appren­tice.

Like the orig­i­nal play Romeo and Juli­et, the sto­ry of Sergei Prokofiev and his famous bal­let with the same title is filled with betray­al, strug­gle and untime­ly death. After the Rev­o­lu­tion, Prokofiev had left Rus­sia with the offi­cial bless­ing of the author­i­ties, and resided in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Paris, respec­tive­ly, mak­ing his liv­ing as a com­pos­er, pianist and con­duc­tor. He was lured back to the Sovi­et Union in 1936 with promis­es of lucra­tive com­mis­sions, but the bureau­crat who com­mis­sioned Romeo and Juli­et was exe­cut­ed, as was the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee flunky who approved the bal­let’s orig­i­nal hap­py end­ing (Prokofiev had orig­i­nal­ly changed Shake­speare’s trag­ic end­ing but this evi­dent­ly did not go down well with the Russ­ian author­i­ties!). The author­i­ties then exiled Prokofiev’s first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 con­fis­cat­ed Prokofiev’s pass­port, deter­min­ing that he need­ed “ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ing” from too much West­ern influ­ence.

Despite all this inter­fer­ence, how­ev­er, what comes down to us today is an icon­ic piece of musi­cal dra­ma, with Dance of the Knights being the stand­out piece. We watch it here per­formed by La Scala Milano, as the Capulets strut their stuff on the dance floor. Great cos­tumes too!

Sergei Prokofiev

The Nicholas Brothers’ dance performance in Stormy Weather (1943)

All the dance greats of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, from Fred Astaire to Michael Jack­son, have cit­ed the Nicholas Broth­ers as huge inspi­ra­tions for their craft. Fayard and Harold Nicholas were born (in 1914 and 1921 respec­tive­ly) to musi­cian par­ents who played with the reg­u­lar band at Philadelphia’s famous Stan­dard The­ater. Con­se­quent­ly, the broth­ers, who would sit in the the­atre whilst their par­ents were work­ing on stage, got to wit­ness most of the great Afro-Amer­i­can per­form­ers, jazz musi­cians and vaude­ville acts of the times.

The old­er broth­er, Fayard, taught him­self how to dance, sing, and per­form by watch­ing and imi­tat­ing the pro­fes­sion­al enter­tain­ers on stage and first per­formed along­side his sis­ter Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids. Lat­er, Harold joined, and when Dorothy opt­ed out, they became the Nicholas Broth­ers. They per­formed a high­ly acro­bat­ic and inno­v­a­tive dance tech­nique known as “flash danc­ing”, incor­po­rat­ing ele­ments of tap, acro­bat­ics and bal­let.

As word spread of their danc­ing tal­ents, they became famous in Philadel­phia and their career real­ly took off in 1932 when they became the fea­tured act at Harlem’s Cot­ton Club, per­form­ing with the orches­tras of Cab Cal­loway and Duke Elling­ton. Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. Spot­ted by Sam Gold­wyn, they were invit­ed to Hol­ly­wood and their movie career began.

Their per­for­mance in the musi­cal num­ber Jumpin’ Jive (with Cab Cal­loway and his orches­tra), fea­tured in the movie Stormy Weath­er, is con­sid­ered by many to be the most vir­tu­osic dance dis­play of all time. It’s cer­tain­ly won­der­ful to watch.

Nicholas Broth­ers in flight

Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (c. 1658)

Johannes Ver­meer is right­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est painters of the Dutch Gold­en Age, but it wasn’t always so. Although mod­est­ly recog­nised in his life­time in Delft and The Hague, he quick­ly slipped into obscu­ri­ty after his death, and it remained that way for near­ly two cen­turies, until his redis­cov­ery in the 19th cen­tu­ry by French art crit­ic, Théophile Thoré-Bürg­er, who was so impressed when he came across Vermeer’s View of Delft that he spent years seek­ing out oth­er paint­ings by this vir­tu­al­ly unknown artist. Today, Vermeer’s paint­ings are of course laud­ed as mas­ter­pieces and worth mega-mil­lions; should you ever come across his paint­ing The Con­cert, which was stolen in 1990 and remains miss­ing, do grab it — it’s worth about $200M.

Although “launched” by a cityscape and par­tic­u­lar­ly famous for a tron­ie (Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring), Ver­meer paint­ed most­ly domes­tic inte­ri­ors. As his biog­ra­ph­er put it: “Almost all his paint­ings are appar­ent­ly set in two small­ish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same fur­ni­ture and dec­o­ra­tions in var­i­ous arrange­ments and they often por­tray the same peo­ple, most­ly women”.

A prime exam­ple is today’s choice, The Milk­maid, paint­ed around 1658 and show­ing a domes­tic kitchen maid, suit­ably attired and pour­ing milk into an earth­en­ware pot (and thus pos­si­bly mak­ing bread pud­ding, judg­ing by the amount of bread on the table). Vermeer’s care­ful design (there were sev­er­al revi­sions) result­ed in a mas­ter­piece of light and shad­ow, colour, con­tours, and shape. He restricts his palette main­ly to the pri­ma­ry colours of red, blue, and yel­low, and the pig­ments are rich and vibrant — Ver­meer is known to have used only the very best, and most expen­sive, pig­ments. Above all, the skill of the artist has wrought a remark­ably real­is­tic scene, with quirky but authen­tic fea­tures such as the foot warmer, low­er right, and the hang­ing bas­ket, upper right.

Noël Coward’s Don’t Put You Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington (1935)

Sir Noël Cow­ard: play­wright, com­pos­er, direc­tor, actor and singer, known for his wit, flam­boy­ance, debonair charm and what Time mag­a­zine called “a sense of per­son­al style, a com­bi­na­tion of cheek and chic, pose and poise”. We’ve met Cow­ard before in this blog, due to his involve­ment with Brief Encounter. His songs have amused and charmed me for years: wit­ty and know­ing word­play, pre­cise­ly enun­ci­at­ed and put togeth­er with an extra­or­di­nary degree of scan­sion and uni­ty, and often with a killer title: Don’t Let’s Be Beast­ly To The Ger­mans, Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?, I Went To A Mar­vel­lous Par­ty

Typ­i­cal of his glo­ri­ous­ly sar­don­ic songcraft, is this week’s glimpse of the sub­lime, Don’t Put Your Daugh­ter On The Stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton. In the Thir­ties, at the height of his pow­ers, Cow­ard was apt to receive a con­stant stream of let­ters from women beg­ging him to find parts for their respec­tive daugh­ters in what­ev­er he hap­pened to be stag­ing next. As Cow­ard him­self put it:

“Some years ago when I was return­ing from the Far East on a very large ship, I was pur­sued around the decks every day by a very large lady. She showed me some pho­tographs of her daugh­ter – a repel­lent-look­ing girl – and seemed con­vinced that she was des­tined for a great stage career. Final­ly, in sheer self-preser­va­tion, I locked myself in my cab­in and wrote this song – “Don’t Put Your Daugh­ter On The Stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton”.

The slap­down is exquis­ite. Enjoy its deft lyrics and jaun­ty tune, below. How­ev­er, you won’t hear the fourth verse because this was pulled from the song as it was con­sid­ered by the Lord Cham­ber­lain too offen­sive for the prim 1930s Britain!

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
The pro­fes­sion is over­crowd­ed
And the strug­gle’s pret­ty tough
And admit­ting the fact
She’s burn­ing to act,
That isn’t quite enough.
She has nice hands, to give the wretched girl her due,
But don’t you think her bust is too
Devel­oped for her age?
I repeat
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Sweet
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

Regard­ing yours, dear Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Of Wednes­day the 23rd,
Although your baby
May be,
Keen on a stage career,
How can I make it clear,
That this is not a good idea.
For her to hope,
Dear Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Is on the face of it absurd,
Her per­son­al­i­ty
Is not in real­i­ty
Invit­ing enough,
Excit­ing enough
For this par­tic­u­lar sphere.

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
She’s a bit of an ugly duck­ling
You must hon­est­ly con­fess,
And the width of her seat
Would sure­ly defeat
Her chances of suc­cess,
It’s a loud voice, and though it’s not exact­ly flat,
She’ll need a lit­tle more than that
To earn a liv­ing wage.
On my knees,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Please
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
Though they said at the school of act­ing
She was love­ly as Peer Gynt,
I’m afraid on the whole
An ingénue role
Would empha­size her squint,
She’s a big girl, and though her teeth are fair­ly good
She’s not the type I ever would
Be eager to engage,
No more buts,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
NUTS,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

[Song nor­mal­ly ends here, but here’s the refrain that fell foul of the Cen­sor]

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
One look at her bandy legs should prove
She has­n’t got a chance,
In addi­tion to which
The son of a bitch
Can nei­ther sing nor dance,
She’s a vile girl and ugli­er than mor­tal sin,
One look at her has put me in
A tear­ing bloody rage,
That suf­ficed
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Christ!
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, or your son!

Noel Cow­ard

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1845)

The Raven is a nar­ra­tive poem by Edgar Allan Poe, pub­lished in 1845, famous for its dra­mat­ic, Goth­ic qual­i­ty. The scene is set from the begin­ning: the unnamed nar­ra­tor is in a lone­ly apart­ment on a “bleak Decem­ber” night, with lit­tle more than a dying fire to light the room, when he hears an eerie tap­ping from out­side his cham­ber door. Into the dark­ness he whis­pers, “Lenore,” hop­ing his lost love has come back, but all that could be heard was “an echo [that] mur­mured back the word ‘Lenore!’ ”. The tap­ping per­sist­ing, he opens the win­dow where­upon the mys­te­ri­ous raven enters the room and perch­es atop a sculp­tured bust above his door.

The man asks the raven for his name, and sur­pris­ing­ly it answers, croak­ing “Nev­er­more.” The man knows that the bird does not speak from rea­son, but has been taught by “some unhap­py mas­ter,” and that the word “nev­er­more” is its only response. Thus, he asks a series of ques­tions, all elic­it­ing the stock response at the end of each stan­za.

Poe was very inter­est­ed in express­ing melan­choly in poet­ic form. As he wrote in Graham’s Mag­a­zine in 1846: “Of all melan­choly top­ics, what, accord­ing to the uni­ver­sal under­stand­ing of mankind, is the most melan­choly?” – the answer, of course, Death. And when is Death most poet­i­cal? “When it most close­ly allies itself to beau­ty: the death, then, of a beau­ti­ful woman is, unques­tion­ably, the most poet­i­cal top­ic in the world”. Hence, the poem is about the despair of a bereaved lover, and Poe’s use of the raven — that bird of ill-omen – does lit­tle to sug­gest that a hap­py out­come is forth­com­ing! Per­haps the raven stands for the narrator’s sub­con­scious as he strug­gles with the con­cepts of death and final­i­ty.

There is a lilt­ing rhythm in play; it’s melod­ic as well as dra­mat­ic (and since you ask, it’s in trocha­ic octame­ter, with eight stressed-unstressed two-syl­la­ble feet per lines). There is fre­quent use of inter­nal rhyme, and much rep­e­ti­tion of rhyming around the “or” sound (Lenore, door, lore, nev­er­more).

Who bet­ter to nar­rate this great poem than the prince of hor­ror him­self, Vin­cent Price? Here he is in won­der­ful Goth­ic form, nar­rat­ing, indeed act­ing, this dark classic…superb.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Who’s Substitute (1966)

Lon­don in the Six­ties was, famous­ly, “swing­ing”, with much of the music and fash­ion influ­enced by the Mod sub­cul­ture. Mods had their roots in the Lon­don of the late Fifties where a small group of fash­ion­able young guns came to be known as mod­ernists because of their pen­chant for mod­ern jazz. By the Six­ties, the move­ment had become the dom­i­nant, and now plu­ral­ist, cul­tur­al force of the times, had broad­ened its hori­zons, and had accu­mu­lat­ed cer­tain iden­ti­fy­ing sym­bols such as the tai­lored suit, the Par­ka, and the motor scoot­er. Mod music, mean­while, had become a diverse mix of soul, R&B, ska, and blues-root­ed British rock.

The ear­ly six­ties had seen a clash of this new cul­ture with the so-called “rock­ers”, a rival sub­cul­ture cen­tred on motor­cy­cling, leather and 1950s rock and roll, which led to the infa­mous South Coast brawls of “mods and rock­ers”, and the ensu­ing “moral pan­ic” of the Estab­lish­ment. But by the mid-six­ties, British rock bands, such as the Small Faces and the Who, were adopt­ing mod fash­ion and atti­tude.

This week, I give you a sub­lime dose of mod sound in the form of the Who’s Sub­sti­tute. Nat­ty threads, swanky atti­tude, and above all a killer song from the band’s one true song­writer, gui­tarist Pete Town­shend. Town­shend wrote the song hav­ing being inspired by a line in Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of my Tears: “Although she may be cute, She’s just a sub­sti­tute”.

The song has a great bassline, amply sup­plied by John Ent­whis­tle and assist­ed on drums by ami­able loon Kei­th Moon, gui­tar chops cour­tesy of Town­shend and a suit­ably louche vocal from Roger Dal­trey. The lyrics are clev­er­ly wrought, though it’s no sur­prise that the line “I look all white but my dad was black” was altered for the more racial­ly sen­si­tive Amer­i­can mar­ket (to “I try walk­ing for­ward but my feet walk back”, which was pre­sum­ably thrown togeth­er at the last minute to cries of “yeah, that’ll do”).

What­ev­er, the fin­ished prod­uct is a great exam­ple of styl­ish mod sound from the orig­i­nal “cool Britannia”…enjoy!

You think we look pret­ty good togeth­er
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back-dat­ed, yeah

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back­dat­ed, yeah

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

The Who in 1966

 

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942)

If I ever get to Chica­go, one of the first things on my list will be to see the icon­ic mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can art that is Edward Hopper’s oil on can­vas, Nighthawks, housed at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go. It has been there ever since the Insti­tute bought the piece from the artist, for the sum of $3000, just a few months after its com­ple­tion in 1942.

The pic­ture shows a late-night, sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed down­town din­er, some­where in New York. Many peo­ple have spec­u­lat­ed and tried to work out where the din­er actu­al­ly was but it is far more like­ly to be a com­pos­ite of var­i­ous joints from around the artist’s home patch of Green­wich Vil­lage, Man­hat­tan, cob­bled togeth­er in Hopper’s imag­i­na­tion.

Hop­per and his wife Jo kept metic­u­lous notes about his work, and they pro­vide a rare glimpse into this oft-uncon­sid­ered aspect of the artist’s life: the plan­ning and thought behind a planned work. This excerpt, in Jo’s hand­writ­ing, describes Nighthawks:

Night + bril­liant inte­ri­or of cheap restau­rant. Bright items: cher­ry wood counter + tops of sur­round­ing stools; light on met­al tanks at rear right; bril­liant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 across canvas–at base of glass of win­dow curv­ing at cor­ner. Light walls, dull yel­low ocre [sic] door into kitchen right.

Very good look­ing blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eat­ing sand­wich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) hold­ing cig­a­rette. Oth­er fig­ure dark sin­is­ter back–at left. Light side walk out­side pale green­ish. Dark­ish red brick hous­es oppo­site. Sign across top of restau­rant, dark–Phillies 5c cig­ar. Pic­ture of cig­ar. Out­side of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceil­ing inside shop against dark of out­side street–at edge of stretch of top of win­dow

The pic­ture was clear­ly not thrown togeth­er, and indeed for all this atten­tion to detail, the fin­ished art­work adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It exudes a sense of lone­li­ness, of sep­a­ra­tion, of eery silence and thus dis­qui­et. Who are these peo­ple? What sto­ries of qui­et des­per­a­tion (since we some­how sus­pect that the pro­tag­o­nists are not of a hap­py and sta­ble dis­po­si­tion) have brought them to this late-night ren­dezvous? Nighthawks allows the viewer’s imag­i­na­tion to fill in the blanks.

 

Edward Hop­per 1941

Hubert Parry and John Leaf Whittier’s Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (1888)

Are hymns capa­ble of being a sub­lime art-form? Or does the Dev­il have the best tunes? Well, cer­tain­ly, we might dis­miss the arche­type of the mod­ern folk-derived “wor­ship song”, fee­bly crooned to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a strummed gui­tar, but how about the con­tents of the clas­sic Hymns Ancient & Mod­ern from the hey­day of Vic­to­ri­an hymnody?

Many of these paeans come across to mod­ern ears as some­what plod­ding and, pep­pered as they so often are with that staunch­ly God-fear­ing lyri­cism laid down by the likes of Charles Wes­ley, strict­ly for die-hard Methodists.

How­ev­er, most peo­ple tend to con­nect with at least one hymn from their youth that stirs their spir­it, be it Abide With Me, I Vow To Thee My Coun­try, or that oth­er hardy peren­ni­al, Amaz­ing Grace. One such hymn that I con­tend is capa­ble of sub­lime heights is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, the won­der­ful mar­riage of Hubert Parry’s 1888 music writ­ten for Rep­ton School in Der­byshire and words tak­en from John Leaf Whittier’s 1872 poem, The Brew­ing of Soma.

The title of that poem may appear odd; the “soma” of the title was a sacred drink in the Vedic reli­gion with hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties and which was used by devo­tees in an attempt to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty (cf. the “ide­al plea­sure drug”, soma, of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World). Whit­tier’s point is that one doesn’t need an exter­nal agent to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty; all one needs is to lis­ten to the “small, still voice” inside and to live the sober, self­less lives as prac­tised by the Quak­ers to whom he was aligned.

Be that as it may, it’s when words and music com­bine in the hands (or throats) of a decent choir that the music comes alive. Joe Wright’s film, Atone­ment, has an acclaimed five-minute track­ing shot depict­ing war-torn Dunkirk dur­ing which we begin to hear a choir of sol­diers, in a bat­tered band­stand, singing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. An effec­tive and iron­ic poignan­cy aris­es from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the bleak and des­per­ate scene with the rous­ing majesty of the hymn.

In that spir­it I present a love­ly ver­sion of the hymn, sung excel­lent­ly by the choir of the Abbey School, Tewkes­bury, set, in sim­i­lar jux­ta­po­si­tion, to footage from the Great War.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
for­give our fool­ish ways;
reclothe us in our right­ful mind,
in pur­er lives thy ser­vice find,
in deep­er rev­er­ence, praise.

In sim­ple trust like theirs who heard,
beside the Syr­i­an sea,
the gra­cious call­ing of the Lord,
let us, like them, with­out a word,
rise up and fol­low thee.

O Sab­bath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eter­ni­ty,
inter­pret­ed by love!

Drop thy still dews of quiet­ness,
till all our striv­ings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives con­fess
the beau­ty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy cool­ness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earth­quake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb of 1432, bet­ter known as the Ghent Altar­piece, ranks among the most sig­nif­i­cant works of art in Europe. Housed at Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral in Ghent, Bel­gium, this large and com­plex altar­piece has suf­fered a var­ied his­to­ry over the cen­turies, hav­ing been dis­man­tled, stolen, dam­aged, reassem­bled, recov­ered, cleaned, and restored sev­er­al times over. Thank good­ness that it is cur­rent­ly in good and safe con­di­tion, and open for view­ing by the pub­lic, at St Bavo’s.

I stum­bled across this great work of art on a TV pro­gramme just days before I was due to take a week­end break in Brus­sels. It seemed too serendip­i­tous not to arrange the short side-trip to Ghent, and thus I have been for­tu­nate to view this piece up close and per­son­al.

The van Eyck broth­ers, and Jan in par­tic­u­lar, were sig­nif­i­cant artists of the North­ern Renais­sance, oper­at­ing out of Bruges and leav­ing to pos­ter­i­ty such var­ied works as the Arnolfi­ni por­trait, the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script known as the Turin-Milan Hours, and this great altar­piece in Ghent.

Jan van Eyck, the younger and more famous of the two broth­ers, was a mas­ter of nat­u­ral­is­tic detail. He pays as much atten­tion to earth­ly beau­ty as he does to the reli­gious themes in the altar­piece. The folds of the clothes, the jew­els, the foun­tain, the flow­ers and veg­e­ta­tion, the church­es and land­scape in the back­ground – all reveal a sys­tem­at­ic and dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of the nat­ur­al world.

Com­pare with the ear­li­er, “flat­ter” Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic art of the 14th cen­tu­ry. Although artists like Duc­cio and Simone Mar­ti­ni had begun to explore depth, per­spec­tive, and space, van Eyck takes it to a whole new lev­el and we recog­nise, for the first time, an unques­tion­able real­ism in the fin­ished art­work.

See here for the whole altar­piece and below that for a selec­tion of some of the won­der­ful details.

 

 

Dame Janet Baker performs Dido’s Lament, Glyndebourne (1966)

Dido and Aeneas is a Baroque opera by Eng­lish com­pos­er Hen­ry Pur­cell, com­posed around 1688, and based on Book IV of the Aeneid, the Latin epic poem writ­ten by Vir­gil in the sec­ond decade BCE, that tells the leg­endary sto­ry of Aeneas, a Tro­jan who trav­elled to Italy to found a city and become the ances­tor of the Romans.

Book IV recounts how his ship, en route from Epirus to Sici­ly, is blown off course and lands on the shores of Carthage in North Africa, where Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, and she with him. How­ev­er, Aeneas is remind­ed by the gods of his des­tiny and he must duti­ful­ly depart for Italy, leav­ing Dido in despair at her aban­don­ment.

The opera cul­mi­nates with its most famous aria, When I Am Laid In Earth, pop­u­lar­ly known as Dido’s Lament, where­in Dido slow­ly dies of a bro­ken heart.

Here, we will enjoy Dame Janet Bak­er per­form­ing the role of Dido at Glyn­de­bourne in 1966. It is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the great­est expo­si­tions of tragedy in mod­ern oper­at­ic his­to­ry. The lament is divid­ed into two parts: the “recita­tive” which sets the scene, and the aria which fol­lows and leads us to Dido’s death. Here we will cut to the aria. Dido’s sis­ter, Belin­da, her face radi­at­ing a deeply-felt empa­thy, springs for­ward to sup­port Dido both moral­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Now watch Dido begin her lament. Here’s the libret­to by Nahum Tate:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs cre­ate
No trou­ble, no trou­ble in thy breast;
Remem­ber me, remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.
Remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.

The music is in G Minor, the ulti­mate key for express­ing sad­ness and tragedy, and the bassline (pas­sacaglia) repeats as if in waves of despair, descend­ing, like Dido, toward the grave. Janet Bak­er has been quot­ed as say­ing: “if the Fates are with you, the mag­ic will descend”; they must have been with her here: her manip­u­la­tion of the vibra­to and lega­to, her bear­ing, the gen­uine pathos – the scene is mes­meris­ing.

With superb silent sup­port from Sheila Arm­strong as Belin­da, Bak­er’s immer­sion in the role is absolute and all-con­sum­ing. Take a look at 1:49 and again at 1:56, at the end of the words “Remem­ber me”, and note her head and throat momen­tar­i­ly sag with anguish. Her legs give way at 4:12 and the ladies-in-wait­ing, in uni­son, take a fear­ful step for­ward. The lament now descends chro­mat­i­cal­ly, semi­tone by semi­tone, as Dido descends inch by inch, dead, to the ground.

The repeat­ed phrase “Remem­ber me” is wring­ing with sen­ti­ment; it is no sur­prise to find Purcell’s music to the lament used at Remem­brance Day ser­vices around the coun­try, to poignant effect.

Dame Janet Bak­er in Dido’s Lament

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